Getting up, he stretched a bit. While he hadn't leveled up, his new bloodline provided him with more Intelligence and Perception, and it took a moment to get used to the changes. Once he was done, his thoughts turned back to finishing the dungeon.
He walked up the stairs towards the wooden door leading deeper into the dungeon and pushed it open with ease.
On the other side of the door was a large room containing five more doors—two on each side and one dead ahead. In the middle of the room was a small obelisk with writing on it. It wasn't English, but it didn't matter as [Universal] came in clutch.
Through veiled paths, destiny unfurls,
Five obscured tales enigmatic swirls.
One yields passage, humble and free,
The rest ensnared, entangled in greed.
<[Universal] has Reached Level 4>
"What?" Tom muttered, utterly confused. "Entangled in gre …, what the fuck is this shit? If I wanted to deal with bloody poems, I would have gone to school."
Tom decided to check all the doors. Each door was made of stone, and all of them had symbols engraved on them. The moment he looked at the doors, his bloodline notified him they were runes, not that he needed the bloodline to tell what he was looking at.
"Air, transform, fire, break…. And it's a trap," Tom muttered as he examined the first runic door. The runes were set up to create a firebomb if anyone tried to open it.
With a sly grin, Tom got started. His hands danced across the door, glyphs appearing around the well-made runes, defacing the work and subverting the rune script. It took him a literal hour to finish his modifications. The tricky part was modifying it enough that the magical script would fail in such a way that it wouldn't explode and take most of the room and, by extension, himself with it.
With a delicate touch, Tom activated the script.
BZZZVVTT
The door let out a horrendous buzzing, blasting out sparks like a broken computer. The mana filling the door glowed, flickered, and then went out.
<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reached Level 8>
<[Words will Never Lose their Power] has Reached Level 5>
<[Words will Never Lose their Power] has Reached Level 6>
<[Wordsmith] has Reached Level 9>
<[Universal] has Reached Level 5>
<[Library of Akashic Records] has Reached Level 5>
With the door now dead, Tom grabbed the handle and threw open the door.
Thump
A crossbow bolt slammed into his stomach.
"GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!!!" Tom swore as he immediately got to work on healing his wound as he ripped out the bolt.
Looking up, he was greeted with a view of a chest with a crossbow mounted above it. Feeling properly humbled, he got up, stumbling as he moved over to the chest and opened it up. A smile bloomed across his face as he identified the contents.
He had found a starter kit. Tom whooped with joy. These were worth more than a chest of gold. And if that infernal riddle was to be believed, he had four of them!!
So for the next four hours he worked on unlocking the other three doors. The fourth had no script on it so he left it alone for the time being.
The reason every door took so long was due to the fact that every additional door had more complex traps both magical and mundane. He carefully and slowly worked through each and every trap, triple-checking his work each time, as he patiently worked on the doors. But the rewards, both the actual rewards and the skills were worth it.
DING!!!
DING!!!
DING!!!
Smithing, Alchemy, Enchanting, and Farming. Each one had a class connected to it, and once the game started in earnest, there was good money to be made selling them. He was going to take the enchanting kit for himself. Hector would probably take the alchemy kit, and the farming and smithing kits would be sold for cash.
And, of course, then there were the skills from opening those obscene doors.
<[Augur's Eye] has Reached Level 6>
<[Bright Arts] has Reached Level 11>
<[Bright Arts] has Reached Level 12>
<...>
<[Bright Arts] has Reached Level 16>
<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reached Level 9>
<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reached Level 10>
<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reached Level 11>
<[Words will Never Lose their Power] has Reached Level 7>
<[Words will Never Lose their Power] has Reached Level 8>
<...>
<[Words will Never Lose their Power] has Reached Level 12>
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
<[Wordsmith] has Reached Level 10>
<[Universal] has Reached Level 6>
<[Universal] has Reached Level 7>
<[Universal] has Reached Level 8>
<[Library of Akashic Records] has Reached Level 6>
<[Library of Akashic Records] has Reached Level 7>
<...>
<[Library of Akashic Records] has Reached Level 9>
<[Best of Both Worlds] has Reached Level 6>
<[Best of Both Worlds] has Reached Level 7>
As Tom stretched, he turned to the final door. The plain wooden door.
"If this isn't the boss battle, I'm going to be a little pissed," he muttered.
Tom walked up to and pushed through the simple wooden doors. Past the door was a massive throne room. Seven thrones stood at the far end of the chamber. On each throne sat a draugr in heavy armor fused to their bodies. All of them had well-made weapons on their side.
Tom wasn't going to make the same mistake he made this time. Instead of using [Augur's Eye] on them and potentially setting them off, he started by drawing a wall of fireball glyphs, four for each draugr.
Behind that, he created seven summoning circles. Each one would summon Lesser Pyro Cobras. And behind that, he went wild with his glyph traps, lighting traps, fire traps, water traps, earth traps, and a Holy Light Trap. He wasn't taking any chances with these draugrs. He was going to treat these draugrs like they were all level 20. He even got a few more skill levels out of it.
<[Bright Arts] has Reached Level 17>
<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reached Level 12>
<[Words will Never Lose their Power] has Reached Level 13>
<[Library of Akashic Records] has Reached Level 10>
When he was finally done, he sat back and activated [Augurs Eye] on the draugrs.
"Let's examine you properly," Tom muttered.
Even before the notification finished popping up, all seven Draugr jumped to their feet and turned their icy, cold eyes towards him.
DING!!!
"Alright, I'm suing the devs. This is harassment," Tom called out as the death knights rose from their chairs, each gripping a massive two-handed weapon as they charged.
Instantly, the fireballs opened fire, taking each death knight down a good chunk of HP, but it was not enough to kill the over-leveled monsters. The draugrs roared in rage as their white skin charred black. The moment the fireballs impacted the undead, the summoning circles activated seven massive serpents that rose out of the ground to meet the seven death knights.
The cobras lunged at the death knights, their flaming fangs piercing the undead flesh, but the death knights shook them off. Bringing around their weapons, they started to dance with massive snakes, a dance of fang and blade as the two sides ripped chunks out of each other's flesh.
Tom wasn't paying attention to them, however. He had realized in horror that while his impressive network of traps would kill the death knights, it wouldn't be enough to stop them before they killed him. Tom began rapidly building a new trap designed to deal with an unkillable foe.
The snakes were already failing. The first nail in the coffin came when one of the death knights brought his two-headed ax around, decapitating one of his snakes' heads. As his first summon died, the death knight turned to help his fellow. The domino effect meant that each snake died faster than the one before.
Tom was busy frantically finishing his glyph work. Just as the draugrs finished killing his snakes, the undead charged him, running straight through his traps without a care in the world as the multi-elemental barrage flamed down on them. Fire, water, earth, air, light, and holy magic hammered the seven death knights as they charged through the tunnel, taking out all of their remaining hp. If they had been anything other than death knights, hell, if they had been a single level lower, that would have been the end of it.
But they were level 20 death knights, and they all had the associated capstone perk. As each death knight 'died,' they rose once again, and a golden aura surrounded their bodies.
DING!!!
It was a last fuck you from a dead opponent. As all seven died, all seven rose, their injuries ignored as they charged at Tom, murder in their eyes as they no doubt intended to take him with them. The remaining traps bounced off of them completely useless. The undead were so focused on him they failed to notice the final trap, hastily put together but perfectly functional.
Fwump
All seven undead fell down into a perfect pit trap, collapsing into a mass of rotten limbs as they struggled to get up.
"Ha," Tom laughed, "Fuck you, devs, you fucking hacks, try and cheat me out of my premium loot, fuck you."
Tom threw together the necessary glyphs, and the draugrs were now tied together with ropes of light. To finish it off, Tom waved his hand, causing the pitfall opening to close up.
"Wait five minutes and then extract the experience," Tom muttered as he walked past them, examining his notifications.
<[Bright Arts] has Reached Level 18>
<[Bright Arts] has Reached Level 19>
<[Wordsmith] has Reached Level 11>
<[Party Leader] has Reached Level 5>
<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reached Level 13>
<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reached Level 14>
"I am amazing," Tom muttered as he entered the throne room and found his loot.
DING!!!
"What the hell is this?!" he asked, annoyed.
He stashed the stuff in his inventory as he desperately searched around the room.
"Where is the good loot? This is all settlement stuff, where my mythical sword, my holy necklace, or whatever. This tutorial is a godsdammed, unbalanced fucking bullshit." roared to the open air.
Actually, now that Tom thought about it. This tutorial was fundamentally impossible for a new character unless they were a veteran player. When Tom couldn't find anything, he signed. He was assigned his last level and got to level 10 in his [Augur] class. He also grabbed his remaining spells.
DING!!!
Tom felt like his entire body was electrocuted. Pleasure and pain coursed through his body as he received +10 to all stats. His build finally started balancing itself out. These capstone bonuses would happen at every ten levels and would increase at every ten levels. At level 20, he would get +2 to all stats; at level 30, he would get +3, and so on, until he hit the level cap at 100. Not that getting to level 100 would keep him safe. Unlike humans, monsters didn't have level caps. Then, a second, slightly unexpected notification hit him.
DING!!!
"What the fuck?!" Tom muttered as his time ran out.
It was official: Something was wrong with the tutorial. If he hadn't basically cheated with the draugrs, then he might have had just enough time to run over to this chest and stuff everything inside of his inventory if he didn't even bother to check the loot. He definitely didn't have time to loot all the draugrs on top of that. Something was very wrong with this tutorial. It was almost as if it were trying to deny him any valuable resources.
All of his thoughts ground to a halt as the timer hit zero, and everything went black. The last thing he saw before the blackness took him was one final notification.
You may skip to the next Chapter!
Base
Personal: +4 PER +4 WILL +3 INT +3 CHA
Racial: +3 WILL +2 CON +2 CHA +1 SPIRIT
Bloodline: +5 PER +5 INT
Level Bonus: +1 to all Stats
Mini-Character List
Tom: Our Protagonist.
AN: